Ingela Ihrman: We Thrive | Reading List

Ingela Ihrman has selected material to contextualise the thinking around We Thrive, the artist's first solo-exhibition in the UK.


Study Area at exhibition preview. Photography by Ross Fraser McLean.

Videos
Jan Lindblad, Anakondabrottningen (The Anaconda wrestling), 1967: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EfFgnun7wM
Jan Lindblad, video compilation of nature documentaries for TV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wk9urDls8Uk&t=87s

Texts
Ingela Ihrman, Green Paradises, notes on Jan Lindblad, 2018
Ingela Ihrman, Seaweedsbladet #1, 2017
Stina Nyberg & Sofia Wiberg, The Practice of Listening, 2017, (Paletten Art Journal # 307-308)
Maria Lind, The Transforming wonders of the natural world, 2015 (Art Review March 2015)
Emanuele Coccia, on plants, interviewed by Olivier Zahm, 2017 (purple MAGAZINE, 25YRS Anniversary issue)
Mary Midgley, Beast and Man, 1979 (Routledge)
Chus Martinez, Marianna Vecellio, Metamorphoses, 2018 (Castello di Rivoli)

Further reading suggested by Ingela Ihrman:

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, 2015 (Graywolf Press)
Marston Bates, The forest and the sea, 1960 (Vintage Books)
Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016 (Duke University Press)
Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto, 2003 (University of Chicago Press)
Elsa Beskow, The Sun Egg, 1993
Elsa Beskow, Children of the Forest, 1987
Elsa Beskow, The Flower Festival, 2010 (Floris Books)
The work of the Swedish ethnobiologist Ingvar Svanberg

Ingela Ihrman
We Thrive
9 March – 13 April 2018

Response to Ulay 'So You See Me': by Charis Edward Wells

Student Curatorial Team member and MFA - Art Society and Publics student Charis Edward Wells writes a reflection on her experience of Ulay's exhibition 'So You See Me' at Cooper Gallery

It's a Thursday afternoon in November and I'm sitting in the corner of the Cooper Gallery main exhibition space rubbing my chilly nose to see if it's still there. I've been invigilating the current exhibition for around a month now for three hours a week, camped in the corner with my straight backed chair perpendicular to the unique curved wall. Determined to use the time productively, my aforementioned chilly nose has been stuck in a book or illuminated by the blue light of my laptop screen. I'm alerted from my post intermittently by the sound of a page turning as Ulay's sound piece Aphorisms resonates around the room. The intangible nature of the works which we engage with aurally have been countered with a wooden structure framing twelve A4 prints which show the works written in the original German with accompanying pink English translations orbiting the originals. The individual panels in the structure contain a physical representation of the sound pieces. Each poem is contained in its own frame, suspended by the surrounding air which is full of Ulay's voice. The very air holds the artists intent, the years of experience, the history of the words and the gaps between the two languages.

I force my head down again to submerge myself into the work for my impending assessments trying to allow myself to be lulled into an academic trance by Ulay's voice. He is watching me from the wall to my right, watching me through the lens of his Polaroid from 12 years before I was born. The series of Auto-Polaroids in Elf show a younger Ulay peacocking for the camera alone in the woods. It doesn't feel intimate, more like a display, a performance for everyone in the future looking into these little windows on this wall in Dundee. As if I am a voyeur to a secret performance held many years previously. Does he know I'm watching? The title of the show answers my question:  So You See Me. He is the voyeur, not me: watching me in my intimate moment of solitude in the gallery.

From the adjacent corridor, Ulay dictates his thoughts on Women With Flags, part of his social experiment series where he plays the scientist seeing if he can illicit ethical responses from us, the audience. The accompanying slide show depicts women of various ethnicities proudly parading augmented flags of the countries of their residence. I can see the bright, polymer colours of the flags dancing in the reflections on the doors from my seat. Both colour and voice invading the softness of the main gallery from the dark corridor.

It becomes increasingly difficult to focus on anything else in the space due to the heavy presence of the artist. I give up and close my laptop to walk around the space and view the works. Ulay’s presence is almost tangible. I can feel him looking at me, but it is not me, he is looking at the audience and demanding attention. From his demure reflections on his lover in Pa’Ulay (1973-74) to the extensive documentation of There’s a Criminal Touch To Art (1976) where he brazenly steals Carl Spitzweg’s The Poor Poet and hangs it in a Turkish immigrant household to draw attention to the treatment of migrants in Germany. The entrance to the gallery is plastered from floor to ceiling of the newspaper articles and ephemera associated with this ‘Action in 14 premeditated sequences.’ It is an action that ignited debate in both the art world, the public, and the marginalised communities he drew attention to. The work was/is audacious, incendiary, and paved the way for misdemeanours as an art practice.

Ulay’s work is confrontational, invasive and captivating. He steals your attention as if it was a beloved painting in a national gallery. He has asked questions of us, the audience, since before we could even answer them. Am I a participant in your social experiment? Am I the audience? Who is looking at whom? It is you who is looking at me, Ulay, and you are demanding I look back.

Urgency and Possibility: Counter-Cinema in the 70s and 80s /// Laura Mulvey suggested reading

To coincide with the screening programme of the collaborative works by influential feminist film theorists and filmmakers Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, Cooper Gallery asked Laura Mulvey to select further reading to locate and expand upon the films concerns.

Laura Mulvey talking at Cooper Gallery on the opening of the Screening Programme

Laura Mulvey suggested reading:

Sophie Mayer, 'A narrative of what wishes': Laura Mulvey's and Peter Wollen's adventures in the essay film, 2013 (BFI, London)
Sophie Mayer, Listening to Women, in: Other Cinemas:Politics Culture and Experimental Film in the 1970s; eds S.Clayton and L.Mulvey, 2017 (I.B. Tauris, London)

Esther Leslie, AMY!/Crystal Gazing (available here)
Volker Pantenburg, The Third Avantgarde. Laura Mulvey, Peter Wollen, and the Theory-Film, in: Beyond the Scorched Earth of Counter-Cinema. The Films of Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen; ed. O. Fuke, 2016 (Texte Und Töne, New York)

Laura Mulvey, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, 1975 (Screen, Oxford University Press)
Laura Mulvey, The Spectacle is Vulnerable: Miss World 1970 in: Laura Mulvey, Visual And Other Pleasures, 1989 (PALGRAVE, New York)

Peter Wollen, Godard and Counter Cinema: Vent d'Est in: Readings and Writings: Semiotic Counter-strategies, 1982 (Verso Books, London)
Peter Wollen, The Two Avant-Gardes, 1975 (Studio International, New York)

See more about the screening programme here

Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen
Urgency and Possibility: Counter-Cinema in the 70s and 80s
ran from 29 September 2017 - 7 October 2017 at Cooper Gallery

Artist in Residence: Ross Sinclair /// CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Phase Three /// Shanghai Himalayas Museum

Ross Sinclair reflects on installing his exhibition, Real Life is Dead/Long Live Real Life, at Shanghai Himalayas Museum...

"Ok it’s midnight on Wed 20 September. The show opens not tomorrow, but the next day. It’s hectic, to say the least. I feel like I’ve been here in Shanghai for 3 months although it’s really only been 3 weeks. It seems simply insufficient to say that every day has been a retina-mashing blur of eye opening, stimulating images, experiences, people and places.

I’ve been staying in an apartment rather than a hotel and this has allowed a very different way of understanding the city, very much recommended. It’s a 45 minute walk from the accommodation to the Himalayas Museum and this has allowed great scope for exploration of the many different aspects of Shanghainese culture, amongst the various local neighbourhoods, including some interesting moments in informal shops trying to buy some install materials, for example attempting to explain what ‘wallpaper paste’ might be and what I might want to use it for. (not its stated use predictably) In the eyes of the wary Shanghai shop owner I think I sounded quite odd, even with a translation app, maybe especially with a translation app. I mean, wallpaper paste? Think about it, say it out loud - it barely makes sense in English. What was I thinking?

We’ve had a couple more rehearsals of the (admittedly rather grandiosely titled) Chinese Scottish Real Life Orchestra, trying to smooth out the complexities of learning the songs Real Life is Dead/Long Live Real Life in variable combinations/ mixtures of Chinese and English. I’ve learned the Chinese of the simple lyrics but I think my pronunciation is terrible. Ok, I know its terrible but I’m giving it a shot. I asked the volunteers how they wanted to arrange the songs, how the balance of the languages should be, and I think it’s sounding pretty interesting. In the ‘Orchestra’ we have a combination of members, from quite young people still at school, philosophy students, interactive designers and even a data analyst at Bank of China, and actually everyone is very youthful, except me. We’ll have another rehearsal on the morning of the opening and then make the performance during the launch of the exhibition with everybody wearing their Long Live Real Life t-shirts, especially painted in China for the performance in Shanghai.

Most of this week predictably enough has been extremely busy with the install of the show. No matter how many times I do it I never fail to get an incredible sense of this is the moment mixed with usual trepidation as the works start coming back from (in this case) the various factories, craftsmen and printers, beautiful coloured vinyl records, plush and grand banners, constructed in a traditional Chinese celebratory style, though in this case adorned with the epithets, Real Life is Dead/Long Live Real Life, alongside thousands of posters with various different texts and images. Mr Wang Lin, senior technician has been marshalling his workers good style, he is one of the good guys, the kind of tech you know really cares about the work and wants the exhibition to be seen by everyone in its best light possible, above and beyond…

But the real revelation of the last week for me has been popping across to the other side of the Museum for a bit of respite from the day to day problems of my own install to see Bruce McLean’s work slowly come into focus as the films and photographs begin to appear on the walls, as his dynamic and energised show takes shape. (many works familiar to me but others new to my eye).

When I was a student at GSA in the ‘80’s my peer group and I felt we had very few ‘senior’ Scottish artists we felt we could look up to, to hold in esteem, to act as a role model perhaps – but in many ways Bruce was one those. Of course his seminal works have been influential in my own as well as everyone else’s sense of performance to camera, of music, of humour and above all a keen sense of engagement with an audience, on many different levels, often all at the same time. It is a very genuine pleasure to see those works again, and to experience some of the others I hadn’t seen before in the flesh, so to speak. No matter how insurmountable and intractable the mundane problems I experience getting my shit together on my side of the museum, a quick 15 minutes over at Bruce’s side sees me return to the fray refreshed, with a spring in my step, and my head and heart just a wee bit full of joy."

Artist in Residence: Ross Sinclair /// CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Phase Three /// Shanghai Himalayas Museum 

Ross Sinclair is currently in residence at Shanghai Himalayas Museum as part of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland, Phase Three. His solo exhibition Real Life Is Dead/Long Live Real Life will open on 22 September 2017, alongside I Want My Crown by Bruce McLean.

"I’ve been in Shanghai for about a week now, just about starting to acclimatise. Mind you I think you could live here for a decade and never quite get used to the incredible contrasts of life in a city of 26 million people, all living, working and going about their business, from dawn to dusk, every day. If anything it seems even busier than I remember from out first visit for the CURRENT project more than three years ago.

When I arrived there was the usual whirlwind of meetings to discuss the production of works for the exhibition, timetables and the residency which I have been busy working on over this last week and will continue next week and into the week of installation.

For the residency I proposed something called The Chinese-Scottish Real Life Orchestra where the Museum made an open call for people to come and participate in a project where we would rehearse songs I have prepared for the project and learn to play them together, with whatever instruments folk turned up singing in a mixture of Chinese and Scottish.

We will develop this over the next couple of weeks and make a performance at the opening of the exhibition. We had the first meeting on Saturday. It was fantastic. Mainly young people, some guitars, some traditional flute like instruments and singers, all keen to participate and find out about the project. We were together all afternoon and got a structure together for the event and sent videos round afterwards on We Chat, which is the Chinese messaging app that absolutely everyone uses here.

I’ve been working pretty solidly in the studio space they have for me here and can access the Museum anytime, which is handy. I am being helped with everything by Li Lei from the Exhibitions Department, who translates and fields my many, many requests and queries to the wider staff. All the staff are extremely engaged and are supporting the residency from their different departments.

A couple of days ago I went to a banner factory in Shanghai’s industrial area to select dome materials and styles for some banner I’m having made for the show. accompanied by Mr Wang, head technician who has endless patience for my endless questions. This was pretty exciting for me, as the scale of everything was immense and possibilities endless, if not budgets!

As I type this I can hear the unmistakeable sounds of the current exhibition being dismantled, 5m walls crashing to the ground all around, though here in Shanghai they have a couple of people in the Gallery with big carts, taking away all the material to be recycled and re-used which seems much better than the skipfuls of land-fill I’m used to seeing at the end of exhibition change overs."

TONIGHT /// Poster Club /// Preview & Artists' Talk at NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine, 4.30 - 7.30pm

Tonight marks the launch of Cooper Gallery's exhibition NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine, by Glasgow based artists' collaborative group Poster Club. There will be an Artists' Talk from 4.30 - 5.30pm in Cooper Gallery, followed by the Preview from 5.30 - 7.30pm.

Poster Club, Wheat, Mud, Machine, part of CURRENT | Contemporary Art from Scotland, 
Shanghai Himalayas Museum, 2015.

NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine is a newly created installation of posters, garments and sculptures by Glasgow based artists’ collaborative group Poster Club. Poster Club are Anne-Marie Copestake, Charlie Hammond, Tom O’Sullivan, Nicolas Party, Ciara Phillips and Michael Stumpf.

NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine sees the artists create a new body of work stemming from their participation in Phase One of Cooper Gallery’s major international project CURRENT in Shanghai in 2015.  Curated by Cooper Gallery in collaboration with curators and art organisations in China, developed in partnership with the British Council, CURRENT is a two year contemporary art exhibition and forum programme in Shanghai that showcases for the first time in China the distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland, its grass-roots spirit and its keen debates with the social and political dimensions of art and culture. 

Installation view of NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine by Poster Club.

Poster Club uses the medium of print as a site for experimental collaborative practice. Revisiting previous artworks and utterances is one of the key apparatus in Poster Club’s practice which they describe as a humorous 'institutional self-critique’. Through their use of elusive and humorously provocative slogans and utilisation of the ‘poster’ in its inherent multiple form, Poster Club’s works embody the plurality and complexity of contemporary cultural practice.

During the Preview there will be speeches by esteemed guests from the Consulate General of China in Edinburgh, the Scottish Government and the British Council Scotland.

Poster Club, CURRENT | Contemporary Art from Scotland, Shanghai Himalayas Museum, 2015.

For more information about the event, please see our website: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/events/poster-club-new-wheat-new-mud-new-machine-preview/

For more information about NEW Wheat, NEW Mud, NEW Machine and the artists, please see our website: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/exhibitions/poster-club-new-wheat-new-mud-new-machine/

STUDENT CURATORIAL TEAM ///

PROJECTile

Exhibitions DJCAD Student Curatorial Team members Sophie Suominen, Lily Hassioti, Ally Kay and Genni Meikleham have developed the collaborative project PROJECTile for Cooper Gallery Project Space. Read on to discover more about their project and its development...

PROJECTile is a collaborative workspace fuelled by the ethos of open-source and a passion for digital art and realized through our collective learning of Projection Mapping.

Inviting people from across Dundee, PROJECTile transformed the Cooper Gallery Project Space into a space for experimentation and the sharing of ideas. Together we discovered the world of projection mapping and created moving-image works.

Please join  us at the Exhibition on Thursday 25 February 2016 in Cooper Gallery Project Space from

18:00 – 20:00. Come celebrate our discoveries and a have a beer and a chat.

The PROJECTile exhibition is the outcome of a 2-day WorkRoom in which we collectively learnt projection mapping through experimentation, discovering new open-source software and sharing of ideas. 

WorkRoom participants include:

Scott Smith (Postgraduate Research, DJCAD);

Tina Scopa (Fine Art DJCAD);

Paige Barrett (Animation DJCAD);

Anna Hedstrom(Fine Art DJCAD, Exchange from Australia);

Adam Rapley (Ethical Hacking, Abertay);

Ilona Gatherer (Visual Communications, Abertay);

Naya Magaliou-Soulein (Fine Art, DJCAD);

Caitlin Bowbeer (Illustration, DJCAD);

Ally Kay( Fine Art, DJCAD) and

Genni Meikleham (Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practice, DJCAD).

PROJECTile Exhibitors include: Naya Magaliou-Soulein; Adam Rapley and Anna Hedstrom; Caitlin Bowbeer; Ilona Gatherer and a live music set by Callum Mackie, Jamie Watt and Kieran Milne, Visuals by Sophie Suominen and Lily Hassioti.

Projectile WorkRoom, Everyone is busy playing and discovering. The Cooper Gallery Project Space, Photograph by Lily Hassioti. 2016.

The WorkRoom... 

We began the first day with a discussion of current art works and practices at the forefront of moving-image and digital production around the globe. This was followed by a brief showcase of methods which utilize the open source software available to successfully wrap a video round an object: thereby rendering the object reanimated. Playing and working collaboratively over coffee and the necessary biscuits, the WorkRoom became illuminated with moving image.

The next day we looked at ways in which our relatively basic software could be expanded. We gathered ideas for the upcoming exhibition of work produced within the workspace.  Moving away from mapping simple geometric shapes to showcasing moving image onto performers, distorting text, splitting beams and making the images dance across the room. Together we created environments viewers could become enveloped in or displays fit for VJ nights.

Experimentation by Ilona Gatherer, Tina Scopa and Paige Barrett.

The Cooper Gallery Project Space, Photograph by Lily Hassioti, 2016.

Its safe to say we all had fun and pushed moving image beyond the frame.

PROJECTile, the idea beyond the happening, came from what we recognise to be a desire to make and experience digital art in Dundee and within Scotland.

The WorkRoom was a chance for artists and practitioners in Dundee to have the ability to work collaboratively and learn together. Digital art online is for the most part open-source: the software is shared freely to enable people to create art works in which quite often, they then give back to the ‘system’ by publishing the means of how to make their works for anyone to learn from, as well as re-create the results.

Photograph by Lily Hassioti. 2016.

Digital art is autonomous in some respects and characteristics of this open-source community appear to correlate with the art scene within Dundee. We recognize the city to be a hive of practitioners that thrive on the inspiration of each other’s practices. At the forefront of community-based work here are collaborative practices. Our aim is to bring another artistic face to Dundee by working together to facilitate more opportunities to share our creations and knowledge, which can in turn feed into our individual practices. Each one of us has a certain set of skills and sharing them not only enables a wealth of knowledge, it also encourages new ways of thinking and different forms of practice.

PROJECTile, we hope will be the kindling for future sparks of open sharing and happenings in Dundee....

For more information about the Student Curatorial Team, an initiative developed by Exhibitions DJCAD, please see this webpage.